Elite: Dangerous Roleplaying Game

Quickstart cover

'BLAST INTO A DANGEROUS GALAXY…

…where the police shoot on sight, entire systems are overrun with space pirates, and money is the only thing that talks.  Gear up with high tech equipment to overcome heavily armoured combat drones, elite corporate assassins, and over-gunned soldiers of the interstellar powers.'

Er... yeah, okay then.

The new Elite: Dangerous Roleplaying Game has released a whole load of free stuff for you to download and have a play with, to make sure that this system is for you. There's a free adventure with the basics of the rules, some story hooks, ship and character sheets, and some game maps and resources. That's quite a haul, and it gives an excellent idea of what the game is all about.

Just to start me off, I downloaded the quickstart adventure and I like what I see, especially the art style and the layout. I've not played the new Elite: Dangerous yet; the last time I played Elite was on the Spectrum 128+ (with built-in datacorder!) and then on the Amiga 500 (with the 1MB upgrade!) so that's a while ago. I've followed the development of the new Elite but lack the time to give it the attention it deserves, even though I have it here for the PS4 still in it's shrinkwrap. The videos I've seen and the love people have for it convinces me that this is a game for me.

From the quickstart PDF

The layout is great and the artwork is really good. There's a good solid sci-fi adventure feel to it and the system - roll a D10, add a skill score and beat a target number - looks like it'll work pretty well. There are no full character rules in this, but there's plenty to give you a more than decent insight as to how the system works, both with characters and the starships that dominate the computer game.

I've yet to try the adventure but the quickstart tells me it's something for me to seriously consider getting hold of. In the adventure you get the adventure 'The Worst Intentions' with four pre-generated characters including their ships and equipment. You get partial rules for personal combat, spaceship combat and ground combat. However, you don't get character and adventure creation rules, spaceship modification rules, full equipment lists, and the full combat rules.

'The players begin as police detectives for the independent Asellus Primus system.  Each player has a Viper Spaceship, a police interdiction and combat ship used to enforce law in the sector.  Their ships also contain a special vehicle called a Surface Reconnaissance Vehicle (SRV) which is a little like a super advanced moon buggy.  The SRV is designed to be used on any planet, even those without atmosphere.  It is basically the player’s ‘police car’.

Good luck Commanders and enjoy!'

Sounds like fun to me.

From the quickstart PDF